Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Holy Spirit

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Lent: Mass for the Pope

    Thursday of the Second Week of Lent: Mass for the Pope

    Today’s readings

    The great sin of the rich man may not have been the sin of neglecting poor Lazarus, although that was certainly bad.  His greatest sin, though, was that he trusted in himself and not in God.  He had everything he needed in life, because he was able to trust in himself to get it.  But he never had a relationship with God.  Now in death, he wants the good things God will provide for those who trust in him, people like Lazarus for example.  But he has already made his choice, and unfortunately now, trusting in himself doesn’t bring him anything good.  Blessed are they, the Psalmist says today, who hope in the Lord.

    Today we also celebrate the last day of the pontificate of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.  Benedict is a man who truly has trusted in God, and has continued to do so in his last days.  Rather than cling to power in his last days, as his health deteriorates, he has trusted in God to lead the Church and has resigned the pontificate, which has been rather unprecedented in recent centuries.

    And so we give thanks today for the leadership of Pope Benedict, for his strength and spirituality and intellect, all of which have allowed him to serve God and the Church with grace as pope, as a cardinal before that, and a theologian.  Like the one of whom Jeremiah speaks in our first reading, Benedict’s life has been fruitful and has given life to the Church.

    As we look forward to the election of his successor, we pray that the Spirit will continue to guide the Church in the years ahead.  Blessed are we who hope in the Lord!

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
    w    ho proceeds from the Father and the Son,
    who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
    who has spoken through the prophets.

    We say these words every Sunday, and unfortunately I think they can become a little rote.  And that’s too bad, because they are beautiful words, and they have been given to us at great cost.  We should pray them perhaps a bit more reflectively today, on this feast of the Holy Spirit.

    So these words are the part of the Creed that speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today.  Today is the birthday of the Church, the moment when the Spirit descended upon those first Apostles and was passed on through them to every Christian ever since.  The Holy Spirit emboldened those first disciples and continues to pour gifts on all of us so that the Church can continue the creative and redemptive works of the Father and the Son until Christ comes in glory.  That is what we gather to celebrate today.

    At the Ascension of Christ into heaven, which we celebrated last Sunday, the apostles had been told to wait in the city until they were clothed with power from on high.  This is exactly what we celebrate today.  Christ returned to the Father in heaven, and they sent the Holy Spirit to be with the Church until the end of time.  That Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary so that God can continue to work in the world and be in the world while Christ was no longer physically present.

    I don’t know if we understand how radically the Holy Spirit changes things.  The Fathers of the Church wrote about it very plainly.  Saint Cyril of Alexandria writes: “It can be easily shown from examples both in the Old Testament and the New that the Spirit changes those in whom he comes to dwell; he so transforms them that they begin to live a completely new kind of life.  Saul was told by the prophet Samuel: The Spirit of the Lord will take possession of you, and you shall be changed into another man.  Saint Paul writes: As we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, that glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, transforms us all into his own likeness, from one degree of glory to another.”

    And we do see the work of the Holy Spirit on those disciples of the early Church.  They were confused people.  They had no idea what to do now that Jesus had died and risen.  Think about it.  What if you were there?  What would you have made of all that?  Would you know what to do next any better than they would?  I don’t think I’d do very well!  But it was the Holy Spirit that changed them.  And thank God for that, or we wouldn’t have the Church to guide us today!

    The Spirit changed Peter from an impulsive, bumbling disciple to an Apostle of great strength.  He shared his own gift of the Holy Spirit with many others, baptizing them and confirming them in the faith.  He guided the Church from its rough beginnings to the birth of something great.  The other Apostles likewise went out, bringing the Gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit to all corners of the then-known world.  Their witness eventually brought the Church to us, in our own day.  The Spirit changed Saul from a man who oversaw the imprisonment and murder of Christians into Paul, a man who was on fire for the faith.  His preaching and writing converted whole communities of Gentiles and helped them believe in the Gospel, and continues to inspire us in our own day.

    The Holy Spirit has continued to work in the hearts and minds of countless saints through the ages, making up for any personal inadequacies they may have had and giving them the strength to teach truth, write convincing testimonials, reach out to the poor and needy, bind up the broken and bring hurting souls to the Lord.

    That same Holy Spirit continues to work among us in our own day, if we are open, if we let him do what he wills.  The Holy Spirit is still making saints, guiding men and women to do things greater than they are capable of all on their own, for the honor and glory of God.  This is the Spirit who enables you to have words to speak to someone who is questioning the faith, or to a child who wants to know why the sky is blue, or to a friend who needs advice that you don’t know how to give.  The Spirit even speaks for us when we are trying to pray and don’t know quite what to say to God.

    The Spirit gives us the inspiration to do acts of mercy and love.  It is the Holy Spirit who encourages you to take on a ministry at church, or to coach a softball team, or to look in on a sick friend or neighbor, or give an elderly parishioner a ride to church.  It is the Spirit who inspires us to pray in new ways, to grow in devotion, to spend more time getting closer to the Lord.  All in all, it is the Holy Spirit who helps us to find the way to heaven, the goal of all of our lives.

    We should pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit every morning of our lives.  It’s amazing how much that changes me over time.  The prayer I learned at my Confirmation is as good a way to pray that as any, and maybe you know it too.  If you do, pray along with me:

    Come, Holy Spirit
    fill the hearts of your faithful
    enkindle in them the fire of your love.
    Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created,
    and you shall renew the face of the earth.

    Amen.

  • Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the great things about being Catholic, I think, is the celebration of Easter. We do it up right, and keep doing it for fifty days! In fact, just yesterday we completed our celebration of Easter Day, which lasts for eight full days. It certainly makes sense to us that the joy of our salvation should be celebrated with such great festivity, and we shouldn’t be so eager to toss the lilies out of the church.  Today we begin the second phase of our Easter celebration. Having completed the Octave of Easter, we now begin the preparation for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Apostles, and later to each Christian.

    We have in our Gospel today the emergence of the interesting figure of Nicodemus. He was a Jew, and one of the Pharisees. But he found Jesus and his message compelling, so a few times in John’s Gospel we get to hear from Nicodemus. Even though the rest of the Pharisees flat out rejected Jesus, Nicodemus knew that he couldn’t reject him so quickly. There was something to this Jesus, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.  We don’t know if he never fully, publicly accepted Jesus, but he definitely took many steps on the way.

    Today Nicodemus and Jesus speak about being born again, born of the Spirit. This for us is a process of accepting the Gospel in faith, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and then living as a people reborn. Although we can point to our Confirmation day, and even the day of our Baptism as days when we received the Holy Spirit, the process of accepting the Gospel in faith and living as a people reborn in the Spirit is one that takes the better part of all of our lives. What we celebrate with joy today is that we are on that journey. Because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now live according to the Spirit’s direction in our lives, confident that that Holy Spirit will give us the gifts and courage to do what we are called to do. The Apostles did that in today’s first reading, and now we must do the same.

  • The Most Holy Trinity

    The Most Holy Trinity

    Today’s readings

    Today’s celebration of the Most Holy Trinity reminds us of the fact that God loved the world he created so much that he was determined to remain in relationship with it.  “God so loved the world,” the Gospel tells us, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  That very familiar quote from John 3:16 has often been described as the entire Gospel all in one verse, because it tells us the reason for Our Savior’s coming, and the purpose for our existence, which is eternal life.

    God wishes to remain in relationship with us, his creatures, because God himself is a relationship.  We will never really understand the Trinity in this lifetime, we know that, but we also know that in the Blessed Trinity, our Church has described God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We recall this deepest of our beliefs every time we make the sign of the Cross, every time we receive a blessing, indeed every time the priest greets us at Mass with those familiar words: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.”  God is a relationship: the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son with the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit with the Father and the Son.  Three persons, one God, all in relationship.

    But make no mistake, I don’t come before you today to define the Holy Trinity for you as if I’ve figured it all out.  This most profound of our beliefs remains perhaps the deepest of all our mysteries.  A story about St. Augustine tells us as much: The story goes that he was walking along the beach, trying to figure out the nature of the Holy Trinity. As he walked along, he came across a little boy who had dug a hole in the sand right next to the shore. With his little hands he was carrying water from the ocean and was dumping it in the little hole. St. Augustine asked, “What are you doing, my child?” The child replied, “I want to put all of the water of the ocean into this hole.” So St. Augustine asked him, “But is it possible for all of the water of this great ocean to be contained in this little hole?” And the child asked him in return, “If the water of the ocean cannot be contained in this little hole, then how can the Infinite Trinitarian God be contained in your mind?”  With that the child disappeared.

    But just because the Trinity is a mystery, that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about it.  In many ways, the mystery of the Trinity is a great blessing.  If we could really figure God out and define God in a neat set of explanations, it would be way to easy for us to simply file God away and never give a second thought.  Because we have to struggle with the mystery of the Trinity, this means we must constantly call God to mind and try to wrap our minds around God in new ways.  I once asked some fourth grade students to write down questions that they had about God.  The questions they had were wonderful:  Why can’t we see God?  Why did God create the world?  If God created life, then how did God become God?  Why does God love us?  Was God there when Jesus was dying?  Why does God forgive us after we’ve done something wrong?  How do we know the Holy Spirit is with us?  But there was one question that seemed to get to the bottom of it all for me:  What is God like? And I realized that question was where the rubber meets the road in our faith, and that question was the whole reason for celebrating this feast of the Holy Trinity: we have to every day examine what God is like so that we can remain in relationship with our God who is a relationship and who longs to remain in relationship with us.

    Again, I’m not going to stand here and tell you the definitive answer to that question.  And that’s because there really isn’t one definitive answer to what God is like.  We could pass out cards right now and everyone could write down one thing that God is like.  And every one of us would be right in some ways, and every one of us would be wrong in some ways.  We could say that God is love, and we’d be right, but we’re wrong if we think of love in the limited way that we humans can conceive of love.  We could say that God is good, and we’d be right about that, but we’d be wrong if we think of God’s goodness in the way that a candy bar is good or a new car is good or even a new baby is good.  Our limited vocabulary can’t even come close to describing God.  As the song goes, our God is an awesome God, more so than any lyrics or other words could ever describe.

    So I want to go back to this idea of God as a relationship.  I do that because it’s one of a million ways I could talk about the Trinity today.  But I do it also because I think that God as a relationship is such a very appealing way to think about God.  We all know how much our good relationships mean to us, and so it is very desirable to think of our relationship with God, and of the relationship that is God.

    Because sometimes we need a parent.  And so relating to God as Father reminds us of the nurturing of our faith, being protected from evil, being encouraged to grow, and being corrected when we stray.  If you’ve had difficulty with a parent in your life, then relating to God as Father can also be difficult.  But still, I think there is part of all of us, no matter what our earthly parents have been like, long to have a loving parental relationship.  God as Father can be that kind of parent in our lives.

    And sometimes we need the Son.  Relating to God the Son – Jesus our brother – reminds us that God knows our needs, he knows our temptations, he’s experienced our sorrows and celebrated our joys.  God in Christ has walked our walk and died our death and redeemed all of our failures out of love for us.  God the Son reminds us that God, having created us in his own image and likeness, loves what he created enough to become one of us.  Our bodies are not profane place-holders for our soul, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that very body was good enough to become the dwelling place of God when he came to earth.  Maybe you’ve never had a brother or sister or never were close to yours, but in Christ you have the brother above all others who is present to you in all your joys and sorrows.

    Sometimes, too, we need a Holy Spirit.  Because we often have to be reminded that there is something beyond ourselves.  That this is not as good as it gets.  As wonderful as our world and our bodies can be, we know they are also very flawed.  The Holy Spirit reminds us that there is a part of us that always longs for God, no matter how far we have strayed.  The Spirit reminds us that our sins are not who we are and that repentance and forgiveness are possible.  It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to do the really good things we wouldn’t be capable of all by ourselves, the really good things that are who we really are before God.

    Maybe God comes to us as Trinity because one face of God is not sufficient to be God for us creatures who are constantly changing, and constantly struggling.  One day we need the Father, tomorrow we may need the Son and down the road the Holy Spirit.  Whatever we need, the point is that God is there.  Always was, always will be.

    So back to that fourth grader’s question:  What is God like? Well, that’s a reflection I think I’ll leave you all with today.  What is God like?  I hope you struggle with that question your whole life long.  I hope I do too.

     

  • Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the great things about being Catholic, I think, is the celebration of Easter.  We do it up right, and keep doing it for fifty days!  In fact, just yesterday we completed our celebration of Easter Day, which lasts for eight full days.  It certainly makes sense to us that the joy of our salvation should be celebrated with great festivity, and we shouldn’t be so eager to toss the lilies out of the church (even if I am allergic to them)!

    Today we begin the second phase of our Easter celebration.  Having completed the Octave of Easter, we now begin the preparation for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Apostles, and later to each Christian.  We have in our Gospel today the emergence of the interesting figure of Nicodemus.  He was a Jew, and one of the Pharisees.  But he found Jesus and his message compelling, so a few times in John’s Gospel we get to hear from him.  Even though the rest of the Pharisees flat out rejected Jesus, Nicodemus knew that Jesus couldn’t be ignored.  There was something to this Jesus, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.  We don’t know if Nicodemus ever fully, publicly accepted Jesus, but he took many steps on the way.

    Today Nicodemus and Jesus speak about being born again, born of the Spirit.  This for us is a process of accepting the Gospel in faith, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and then living as a people reborn.  Although we can point to our Confirmation day, and even the day of our Baptism as days when we received the Holy Spirit, the process of accepting the Gospel in faith and living as a people reborn in the Spirit is one that takes the rest of our lives.  What we celebrate with joy today is that we are on that journey.  Because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now live according to the Spirit’s direction in our lives, confident that that Holy Spirit will give us the gifts and courage to do what we are called to do.  The Apostles did that in today’s first reading, and now we must do the same.

     

  • Easter Monday

    Easter Monday

    Today’s readings

    Well, it wasn’t all that long ago that we saw the disciples scatter in fear, was it?  Here they had seen their friend arrested, tortured, and killed, so one could not blame them for running scared.  I’m sure I would have done no different if I had been them.

    But in today’s first reading, we see them different.  They have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, they have seen him alive.  More than that, they have been filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that great gift he had promised them all along.  And so now they get it.  Now they realize what he had been saying to them, and now they have courage and fortitude to proclaim the Gospel.

    “God raised this Jesus, of this we are all witnesses,” Peter says on their behalf.  They have entered into mystagogia … that time following a great event when those involved look back on what they have experienced, and come to new understandings based on those experiences.  Their mystagogia of the Easter event has given them fresh hope and courage, and has empowered them to proclaim the message.

    We didn’t have any baptisms here this Easter Vigil, but many were baptized into the Church and Christ Jesus throughout the world.  They are experiencing mystagogia in these days.  They are looking back on their reception into full communion with us, and reflecting on what they have learned and how they have grown in their faith.  We cradle Catholics also experience mystagogia in these days.  Our baptisms are not as fresh in our minds as are the baptisms of our new brothers and sisters, but we recall with gratitude and profound joy the saving sacrifice that has given us hope of new life.  So we too, like the apostles, are empowered to proclaim the message.

    God has raised this Jesus from the dead, and we are witnesses of these things, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Praise God!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

     

  • Confirmation

    Confirmation

    My dear Confirmation candidates, you come here tonight after a long period of growing in faith and preparing for this beautiful sacrament.  You have completed many hours of service, you have learned a good deal about our faith and our church, and you have prayed together on retreat and in many other ways.  Tonight you see the grace of all of that: you receive the sacrament for which you have worked so hard to prepare.  I congratulate you for coming here tonight to choose yet again to be a follower of Christ in the Catholic Church.  I have more to say to you, but first I would like to speak briefly to your parents and godparents.

     

    And so parents, I appreciate on behalf of the Church all that you have done to raise your children in the faith.  A parent’s job is a difficult one, perhaps more so now than ever.  You know all too well that there are so many ways a young person can be distracted from their faith and even from their family.  But you have persevered by bringing them to baptism, teaching them to pray, giving them the grace of continued religious instruction, and bringing them here tonight for Confirmation.  A parent’s vocation is to bring children into the world and witness and teach them the faith.  This you have begun, but the job is never complete until that great day when we all meet in heaven.  And so I encourage you to continue this great work by seeing that your family comes to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, and that you all become life-long learners of our faith.  Then on that great day when we do all come together to eternal life, you can hear your Lord say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord!”

     

    Sponsors, you have undertaken a very important role in the life of the young person you are sponsoring.  It is not something simply ceremonial.  It is your job to continue to witness to the faith and encourage your candidate to grow in that faith.  This is not a merely ceremonial role: you are expected to live lives of integrity, showing that you believe in Christ by your example, and to encourage and correct the person you are sponsoring so that they remain on the road they have chosen tonight.  You share with their parents in the role of bringing them to heaven.

     

    And now, candidates, I return to you.  You have come here for many reasons tonight.  Some of you have freely chosen to come to the sacrament of Confirmation to be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit; it is a part of your faith and you have chosen to share in it.  Others perhaps are doing this because a parent or grandparent or some other adult has urged you to do so.  And that’s okay; they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t insist that you do what is best for you.  Whatever the reason is that you’re here, the important thing is that you have come here.  The Holy Spirit which you will receive in a sacramental way tonight will continue to work in your hearts and in your lives to guide you through the years ahead which could be quite difficult.

     

    As a young person in today’s world, you have a lot on your plate.  High school demands much from you: academics, sports, extra-curricular activities, all of these take time and energy and attention.  Then there are the pressures of growing up in this environment.  Your parents and teachers expect you to perform at your best, to get good grades and eventually to go to a good college and get a good job.  That is a hard thing to accomplish for anyone and for some more than others.  You also have the pressures to socialize with other young people.  You have to have friends and be popular, and sometimes the cost of that is pretty high.  You are tempted to try alcohol and drugs and going too far in relationships, and all kinds of things that you know are wrong and that will lead you into sin.  The cost of choosing not to take part in that is extremely high.

     

    Everyone thinks that being in high school is one of the greatest times in your lives, and it sure can be.  But it can also be very difficult with the many pressures you have.  But the reason we celebrate Confirmation as a community is that we are saying to you that the pressures you experience are not pressures you need to experience alone.  Tonight I want you to notice three very important gifts.

     

    The first is the gift of the adults in your life who only want the best for you.  Your parents, grandparents, sponsors and other adults in your family are there for you.  You have teachers, the staff here at church, and Father Raj and me.  You need to know that you can and should go to any of us when times are tough, when you have to make hard decisions and when you don’t know how to do the right thing.  The adults in your life have had to make the right decisions every day, and sometimes we do it well and sometimes we learn from our mistakes.  But we want you to know that you can always come to us for help.

     

    The second gift is your classmates here tonight.  Look around: these are all people who have come here tonight because they believe that there is something special, something important, about living in Christ and living their Catholic faith.  When peer pressure seems to make life so hard, know that there are peers here at Notre Dame who stand with you to make the right decisions.

     

    And the final gift is what we celebrate sacramentally tonight: the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  These days the Holy Spirit doesn’t often help us to speak in tongues, and it might be that nothing miraculous will happen as a result of this sacrament tonight.  Unless maybe you look a little harder.  For me, I see miracles that I attribute to the Holy Spirit all the time.  I am able to make hard decisions here at the parish with wisdom that I know is not my own understanding but rather something that comes from God.  I am able to console people going through hard times with words that I could never have dreamed up on my own.  I pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance every morning.  And every morning I thank the Spirit for the graces I have been given.  I think that can happen for you too.

     

    Tonight’s Gospel teaches that Christ is “The Way, the Truth and the Life.”  That doesn’t mean that life will be easy.  For Jesus, that way was the Way of the Cross.  The truth that he preached cost him his life.  And the life that he gained meant that he had to die first.  In some ways that’s true for all of us.  Life is hard, and living life the right way comes at a cost.  But the reward we have is a relationship with our God that is deeply personal and unparalleled by any other relationship.  The reward is the Gift of the Holy Spirit that helps us to make the hard decisions and to live the right way, and to do the hard things that we think we can never do.

     

    So I encourage you to continue to be active members of the Church.  Tonight is not the end of your faith journey.  Continue to come here every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation for Mass so that you can receive the grace of the Eucharist to strengthen you, and the grace of the Holy Spirit to guide you.  Continue to be of service to those in need so that those who you serve, who have very hard lives, can help you to become strong people of faith.  Continue to learn about your faith so that on that great day when you are called to heaven, you’ll know where you are and will recognize your Lord.

     

    And now, if you are ready to receive this Holy Sacrament, I ask you to renew your baptismal promises.

     

  • Wednesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The process of discernment is one that takes the better part of one’s life to learn, I think.  This is a skill that involves a great deal of trial and error, quite a bit of learned wisdom, and of course the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  “By their fruits you will know them,” Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel.  I fear that we may be rather disconnected from our rural roots and may not have the experience of finding a rotten tree by its fruits.  But anyone who does a good bit of grocery shopping will tell you there are some places you shop for produce and others you don’t.  That’s the indicator Jesus wants us to know today.  Against this lens we have to hold up our relationships, our pending decisions, our choices for how to spend our time.  What comes of these things?  If good things follow, then they are meant for us.  If bad things follow, we have to uproot them mercilessly in order that they may not poison our spiritual lives.  By their fruits we will know them.

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    We believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the prophets.

    You know those words very well; we proclaim them every Sunday, and will proclaim them in a few minutes.  This is the part of the Creed that speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today.  Today is the birthday of the Church, the moment when the Spirit descended upon those first Apostles and was passed on through them to every Christian ever since.  The Holy Spirit emboldened those first disciples and continues to pour gifts on all of us so that the Church can continue the creative and redemptive works of the Father and the Son until Christ comes in glory.  That is what we gather to celebrate today.

    At the Ascension of Christ into heaven, which we celebrated last Sunday, the apostles had been told to wait in the city until they were clothed with power from on high.  This is exactly what we celebrate today.  Christ returned to the Father in heaven, and they sent the Holy Spirit to be with the Church until the end of time.  That Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary so that God can continue to work in the world and be in the world while Christ was no longer physically present.

    The Holy Spirit works in us and in the world in so many ways.  But the way that he works in us that jumps out at me today is through language.  The Spirit is speaking powerfully in the world, and our Liturgy reminds us of that.  It is the Holy Spirit that speaks to the world in the voice of God.  Consider what we have heard and will yet hear today:

    In the alternate opening prayer, the Church prays:  “Loosen our tongues to sing your praise in words beyond the power of speech, for without your Spirit man could never raise his voice in words of peace or announce the truth that Jesus is Lord.”

    In our first reading, the Spirit spoke through the apostles.  Even though all of them were Galileans, and spoke some dialect of Aramaic, still people who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the then-known world, people of every race and language group at that time, all of them came to hear the Gospel proclaimed in their very own language, as though it had been spoken just for them, which of course, it was.  This incredible miracle is often seen as the undoing of the Tower of Babel story, in which men who thought they could build a tower high enough to get to heaven all by themselves were penalized by the invention of all kinds of human languages which prevented people from speaking to each other.  Pentecost, then, was the healing of this ill.

    In our Gospel, words are still used by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus tells the apostles even before the Passion, that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate or Paraclete who would teach them everything, and remind them of all Jesus told him while he was alive.

    In the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer, which I will sing in a few minutes, the Church prays: “Today we celebrate the great beginning of your Church when the Holy Spirit made known to all peoples the one true God, and created from the many languages of man one voice to profess one faith.”

    The Holy Spirit speaks to us to give us what we need, and speaks through us in order to bring the world to God.  The Spirit is the voice of the Church proclaiming the one, true faith, and the voice of each disciple courageously living that faith day in and day out.  Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospel that when we are challenged for our faith, we need not fear that we do not have the words to speak in those moments, because the Holy Spirit will speak through us more eloquently than we could on our own.

    The Holy Spirit is also the voice of our prayer.  Saint Paul reminds us of what we certainly know: we do not know how to pray as we ought.  But he also reminds us that we need not worry when words fail us and we cannot pray, because the Holy Spirit groans within us and speaks the language of God who hears us and hears the Spirit in us.

    I am not a master of languages.  I tried but failed to learn French, Spanish and Greek at various times in my life.  Some days I even have trouble with English!  And so not having the words to speak is very real to me in my Spiritual life.  But I certainly learned what Saint Paul taught in my second year in seminary, when both my mother and father were diagnosed with cancer within about a month of each other.  When that happened, I had no idea what to even say to God any more.  The only prayer that I had in me was “help.”  And that, along with the Spirit’s groaning, was enough.  Fellow seminarians prayed for me and with me and over me, and I was eventually able to pray again.  That was the Holy Spirit.

    The Holy Spirit speaks to us all the time, I think, and we would do well to tune in and listen closely.  The Spirit speaks when we are about to embark on a venture or come to a decision and gives us pause because we have not prayed the issue well enough. The Spirit speaks to us when we are agitated or worried or upset or frustrated or dejected, and gives us peace to know we are not alone, that God is there with us in the storm.  The Spirit speaks to us when we are discerning and helps us to know the way we should go.

    Then too, the Holy Spirit speaks in us and through us all the time. The Spirit speaks through us when we know something is wrong and gives us the courage to say so.  The Spirit speaks through us whenever we offer someone kind words, even if we’re not sure that our words are helpful – the Spirit even speaks through us if we have no words, and are just there to be present to those in need.  The Spirit speaks through us when we perceive the injustice in our world and reach out to those in need, to those who are marginalized, and to those the world has forgotten.  The Spirit sings in us when we join with the Church in prayer and praise to God, especially when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, the greatest prayer of the Church.  The Spirit is the one who puts the prayers we offer in our hearts in the first place, and who gives us the words to offer them to God, even groaning for us when our own words are not adequate.

    When we are one, united in the Spirit, we speak to a world that is not inclined to understand the language of faith, in a way that moves them and brings them back to God who created the many peoples of the world to be one with him forever.  That is the great project of our lives, the great project of the Church, the mission that owns us and defines us as disciples.  As Cardinal George is fond of saying, the Church does not have a mission; the Mission has a Church.  And it is that Church that speaks words of the Spirit to proclaim the truth, that Jesus is Lord, and that he is the way, the truth and the life.

    In the Creed, we proclaim that the Holy Spirit has spoken through the prophets.  But that prophetic word is far from over.  The Spirit-spoken prophecy goes on, in the words and actions of people of faith, every day in every place, so that all people can have the opportunity to know the truth that God is alive and fully intends to love his people into heaven.

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today we’re gathered on what is, for us, the eve of the Ascension.  While the reading that we have in today’s Gospel is from John’s account of the eve of the Passion, the words could well have been spoken to the Apostles on the eve of the Ascension too.  Jesus speaks of leaving the world and going back to the Father, this time until he returns in glory.  The Twelve had to be broken hearted all over again.  They had lost their friend and Lord briefly to death, but had been encouraged by him as he appeared to them after the Ascension, and now he is preparing to leave again.

    But the truth of it is that nothing will happen with the fledgling Church until he does leave.  Only then will the Father send the Holy Spirit to be with the Church until the end of time, giving the early disciples and us later disciples the grace and strength to go forward and proclaim the kingdom and call the world to repentance and grace. If God’s purpose is to be advanced on this earth, then Jesus has to return to the Father. If the Spirit does not descend, the Church would not be born. If the Church were not born, the Gospel would be but an obscure footnote in the history of the world.

    The Good News for us is that the Holy Spirit continues to work among us today, as often as we call on him.  “Ask and you will receive,” Jesus says, and so we ask and receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for the glory and praise of God. We disciples, we friends of Jesus, can count on his blessing, the rich gift of the Holy Spirit, the great witness of the Church. Our lives are enriched by our faith and our discipleship. What we do here on earth, what we suffer in our lives, what we celebrate — all this will bear fruit for the glory of God.